Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

Given the respective positions of everyone there, and the full clip of ammo in the machine gun, the one crazy Ganik could have wiped out the entire population within the courtroom. For one mad moment, the Judge tried to shoot his own man with the handgun, but Swifteye was already all over him by then, and his gun went sliding across the smooth floor. The barrage of lead was terminated from an unexpected quarter.

“Flatear!” shouted Terrell, first to see the welcome sight, as the great prairiecat sprang from the corridor into the chamber of death, ripping the gunner to shreds. Close behind came Noplis, arms full of weapons taken from the pile near the stairs.

The fat Ganik who had brought the Judge the liver slipped on blood, the leavings of that unwholesome supper. With an animal cry to match a prairiecat’s yowl, Von went for the man, and was busy snapping the fellow’s neck before Bigboy could come to the rescue. The befuddled giant was not acting swiftly now; he could not figure out which way to turn. Finally deciding that the Judge was important, the giant pulled Swifteye away from her prey, and was about to throw her, as he had done with the other cat, when Noplis shot an arrow into the huge man’s unprotected thigh. The giant never finished his maneuver, and it was Swifteye’s turn to attack.

Elbowing the frenzied animal away, and finally backhand-ing her so that she was temporarily stunned, the giant began loping toward one of his human opponents. But it was not the archer he sought. The leader, Von, was his target. Bigboy roared a death curse.

As the towering shadow fell across the Horseclans chief, it was joined by another shadow: Flatear, finished with the Ganik, enraged over Swifteye, sank his claws into the giant’s hide. Von turned to help his feline ally, but already the giant had fallen, and Flatear was keeping him prone as sharp fangs worried at the gore-bespattered flesh of the big neck. Another shadow fell across the duo, and Swifteye joined her mate in the kill. As Von saw the blood drain from Bigboy’s face, he returned to his primary objective: passing judgment on the Judge.

The Judge was not thinking about Von. He was staring with mounting horror at the ceiling. More cracks were appearing. Bullet holes in the walls were also producing a spreading network of cracks. It just wasn’t fair. The base had survived up until now. He hadn’t even picked his jury yet.

With any degree of military discipline worth the name, the Ganiks would have prevailed. But the Judge had only been able to give them the appearance of soldiers. The reality was somewhat different. The shaggy men and women were fighting each other in a frenzied scramble to flee the base.

Von’s flesh crawled as he wrapped his hand around the Judge’s scrawny neck, lifted him from where he’d lain, and forced him back into his chair. There were puddles on the floor, but the liquid wasn’t blood—rather something like stagnant water.

With his other hand, Von lifted a sword, grateful to Noplis for the delivery, and drove it straight through the Judge’s midsection, until the blade imbedded itself in the floor. Amazingly, this did not kill; but it pinned him to the spot. Picking the wig up from where it had fallen, Von replaced the smelly thing on the Judge’s head, then stood back, admiring his handiwork. The human monster struggled, as would a bug, in a vain attempt to free himself.

“ ’Tis no easy task returning your ‘justice’ in full measure, but methinks your throne will do as a place to receive it,” said Von—and then he laughed the loud, clean laugh of certainty.

The Judge screamed. It was part cackling, part retching. Slowly the room was emptied of Ganiks, and Von’s warriors gathered around their foe. “Ere now, words came from you like maggots from a carcass,” said Von. “What have you to say before we quit this stinking hole?”

“If you kill me, you’ll remove the moral conscience of the future. I was only practicing the politics of reality, but it appears that I should have made a better choice than Ganiks. We might work together! What do you say we build a new society together?”

Noplis, suddenly more useful than he’d ever dreamed possible, figured out how to turn off the lights, and they left the Judge babbling in the dark about how he could have been a contender.

They tasted good fresh air when they stepped outside, and even the leaden sky of the first night after the earthquake appeared to them as the open vaults of paradise in comparison to where they had been. Von insisted on waiting until the final cave-in, rumblings of which increased as a promise that the Judge would retire soon.

Noplis finally had an appreciative audience for his every word—and the story was all the better told without his usual singsong delivery. He described how Flatear and he had found themselves caught between the flame and the rock, when they reached the edge of a cliff. With rope they had taken from a dead mountain pony, the bard was able to swing down a dizzying ten feet to a ledge below; then the rope was tied to Flatear, and the prairiecat was able to jump within a margin of safety. As night set in, they used some of the rope to make torches, but this light soon proved unnecessary as they detected an illumination showing through a small hole in the rubble.

Clearing this away, they found a tunnel that led directly to the base. They took the short cut. “The spoor of so many unbathed two-legs was a better guide than the underground sun,” mindspoke Flatear.

Like corpuscles in a vein, they were drawn to the source of continued life within the ruined plateau, and came out in a place with a sign that read “Sector 8.” Dead Ganiks were in there, but living ones were clearing an entrance to get at them, no doubt with feeding in mind.

“We heard your mindspeak,” said Noplis, “a relief after the long silence. We followed that, and in so doing, learned of your peril.”

“Could not you have let us know that you lived?” asked Ethera.

“Originally, communication was impossible. The earthquake cut us off in ways we do not understand. When we found you, anon, and you were in the clutches of these vermin, we trusted in stealth.”

“Guards there were in the man-tunnel,” said Von.

“Flatear killed the Ganiks in the corridor,” said Noplis, respect for the feline infusing his voice. With the discovery that his telepathy was working again, the prairiecat had delighted in clouding the minds of the guards, one at a time, before dispatching them.

Suddenly there was a loud crash from within the mountain. Dust puffed out the entrance to below. Several men cheered.

“The Judge is dead,” said Ethera.

Then Noplis said what Flatear would later agree were the wisest words the bard had ever spoken: “Thanks be to all the gods.”

Yelloweye

by Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is one of those rare writers equally at home in both books and television. He has written two novels, Streetlethal and The Kundalini Equation ; collaborated on two others with Larry Niven, Dream Park and The Descent of Anansi , and has yet another collaboration coming out this fall, cowritten with both Niven and Jerry Poumelle, called The Legacy of Heorot. He has also written several television screenplays, mostly for Twilight Zone. In his copious spare time, he both instructs and studies various forms of the martial arts, among them Tae Kwon Do, Kempo Karate, Kali Stickfighting, and Aikido.

He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Toni, and their daughter, Lauren, two dogs, a cat, and a houseful of tame, invisible Tyrannousaurs ( Caveat Burglar).

Winter was dying softly in the ’Ginni mountains. Under the soft, insistent touch of sunlight, the milky ice crystals melted into water. It trickled down, formed shallow, rapid streams that cut through the banks of snow, whispered promises of spring.

Hoofprints dappled the snow. Here goats and sheep foraged for winter grass under the watchful eyes of their herdmaster. In places the hoofprints were scattered, barely impressions in the sparkling white carpet. Where the herd had been guided back and forth regularly the trail cut deep, exposing rock and dark earth below.

A rabbit lay burrowed into the snow, nose pressed against a skewed fence of barren twigs. Its coloration made it nearly invisible, but its pink eyes were nervous, frightened. The smell of Man was strong here. Man, and . . . something else. Something terrifying. An unfamiliar sound wound its way through the trees. The rabbit paused, ears perked.

Paused for a moment too long.

Snow flew in a flurry of sudden motion. With an impossibly fast blur, claws and teeth ripped into the rabbit’s flesh, crushed its body into the snow before the thought flee! could fully congeal. There was a flash of pain too intense for consciousness to bear, and then numbness. It saw its own blood spatter onto the snow, its intestines fill the crimsoned mouth of its slayer. Then, there was nothing.

But the sound wound on. Now lilting, now stringent, the trilling of a flute coaxed by nimble fingers.

“Ar’tor!” The cry rang from a distance, and the music paused. Up above the bloodied twigs, a tuft of snow puffed gut, and a boy thrust his head out of a slit in the rock beneath. If one hadn’t known the cave was there, it would have been impossible to find, so well protected was it by snow and overhanging rock and dead brush.

The boy was as easy to overlook. His neck was thin and clumsily long. His hair was shadow-dark, shoulder-length, and looked perpetually windblown. His mouth and nose seemed too wide for his narrow face. His eyes were huge, dark, inquiring. Somehow, they made the balance work.

“Karls,” he muttered, and popped his head back into his little hideaway. He had five more minutes before his brother would appear. Ar’tor twirled his flute like a baton, then set his lips to it again. There was the thread of melody that he sought. It vibrated in the cave, a clear, intoxicatingly mellow tone.

He should have been scouting for strays, as his brother and friends had for the last three days. But there was no pleasure in that, or in the hundred small and large duties that fell to him as youngest nephew of the chief of the Windrunners. Ar’tor’s greatest satisfaction was to recreate the songs that the old men sang and played around the campfire. To feel them vibrate in his flute, to hear the music buzzing in the back of his head.

Leadership of the Windrunners would never be his. Regardless of his lineage, he would be a songsinger, a Bard, not a warchieftain of the Hilltribes. He would see his sixteenth spring in two more moons, but his brother Karls had seen twenty summers, and was already a blooded warrior. Better for Ar’tor that he accept the gifts that Spring had given him.

The thought of Ar’tor leading the Windrunners was absurd. His singing and playing were tolerated, but not totally understood. He was of a warrior line. His father had lived a warrior and died a warrior’s death, a Lowlander sword in his guts. His uncle, the mighty Syman, was like Karls, a giant in physical strength and a leader of men. Syman was respected by all hundred factions of the Tribes. Ar’tor could never bind them with the power of his words, negotiate treaties, make war on the savage Lowlanders. The very thought terrified him.